Ars Technica And The Lost-And-Found Apple Document (AAPL)

Ars Technica had a cool story earlier this week: It got
its hands on
a report from research firm NPD that showed Apple (AAPL) had
overtaken Wal-Mart to become the biggest music retailer. That's
an interesting milestone, and one that Apple itself trumpeted
a day later.

There was some skepticism about the report, based on documents
Ars had gotten from a source at Apple, where they were being
passed around via email. But luckily, you could see for yourself:
Ars had published the docs on its site.

We have seen some stories this morning claiming to have debunked
this report based on conjecture (no factual detail or analysis).
We repeat: the document says what we said it says, and you can
see it for yourself. The documents were also distributed to Apple
employees, and show Apple as the number-one music retailer during
the period in question.

No more. The links/files Ars had originally published are gone.
"At the request of the NPD we have
removed screenshots of the documents in question," the site says
now. But why comply with the request? After all, Ars isn't a NPD
client, so what's the problem?

"We took them down after the NPD Group asked us very nicely to do
so," Ars managing editor Eric Bangeman tells us via e-mail. OK.
Just for kicks, we asked NPD if they'd
send us a copy of the same thing, or at least a cleaned up
version (we're particularly interested in
Amazon's MP3 sales).

Nope: "Unfortunately, the information reported is apparently
based on a proprietary leaked internal memo from Apple;
therefore, NPD cannot comment on it. This type of statement goes
against our media publishing policy. It's something we would
never release, or permit to be released, by our clients," NPD PR
guy David Riley writes.

So there you have it: If anyone out there managed to snag a copy
of ARS report before it disappeared, be advised that you've got a
hot little document on yours hands (also, drop us a line).

Update: That was fast. An anonymous commenter
sends in this
link. And if that's all there is, hard to see what the fuss
is about -- it's basically the same numbers Ars still has in the
post (with slight differences). Are we missing something?